


Settle With Me

by Schwoozie



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alexandria Safe-Zone, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 09:18:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3523928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schwoozie/pseuds/Schwoozie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's part of the plan, he knows: get close to the inhabitants, earn their trust, act like they aren't planning a violent takeover in a few weeks time. </p><p>It's all part of the plan; and yet, Daryl could never have planned for Beth Greene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Settle With Me

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short piece I wrote about Daryl meeting Beth for the first time in Alexandria. I don't have plans to continue this, so anyone who wants to take it up is welcome.
> 
> Title from "Kiss Me" by Ed Sheeran.
> 
> Thanks to Mary as always.

Daryl meets her at a party neither of them want to be at.

Her name is Beth Greene. Her whole family is dead. She walked from Georgia to DC all on her own and she's the embodiment of every teenage dream Daryl's ever had.

But he doesn't think that when he looks at her. No, he thinks this is good; exactly what Rick wanted, when he forced Daryl into this goddamned penguin suit and told him to make nice for an evening.

(It isn't a penguin suit, not really: It's a pressed blue shirt that smells like fabric softener and pants he can only describe as _slacks_ and if it weren't for the plan he'd rip it all off and walk home butt-naked, appearances be damned.)

But appearances matter, Rick said as he watched Daryl grimace at himself in the mirror. They matter so they can fit in here. They matter so the goddamned fools in this town don't see what's coming.

Daryl feels a bit of feral joy, at that, but also a sadness; the feeling of a circle closing. He and Merle never meant to take over the Atlanta camp like he and Rick are planning for Alexandria, but it still feels like his dumb dead brother is there, winking at him from across the room, caught up in his conspiratorial glee.

But Merle isn't here; Rick is here, flirting with some other blonde and here's Daryl with his own. It really is like being a teenager again.

Except this blonde isn't bought and paid for. This blonde comes free, sugary sweet with a dash of hostile takeover to make the dish sing.

Her name is Beth Greene, and her whole family is dead. He learns this within the first five minutes of meeting her; she seems so relieved to find someone willing to speak with her, the words come at him like bullets from a gatling gun. Not that he understands why he's the only one she has to talk to, and not that what he's doing could be qualified as speaking; more like grunting at regular intervals as he stares at her face, heart-shaped and so animated in speech he expects her to burst into song. She isn't looking at him as she talks; she's looking at the party, speaking to the air, trusting enough that he's listening that she doesn't once glance his way to make sure.

He looks away from her occasionally; at Abraham leaning a little too heavily on an exasperated Rosita; at Carol with a smile so wide Daryl feels a vague sense of fear; at Rick, glancing at Daryl with a nod, leading his blonde to a back room. Ain't that familiar.

“Want to get out of here?” Beth Greene asks.

Now he _really_ feels like a teenager again.

But she doesn't take him into the alley, or a seedy bedroom strewn with dirty bras and used needles. They just walk, aimlessly, he thinks, although he keeps his mental map firm at all times.

Even though now he'd be able to hear her better, she's stopped speaking; just walks at his side, boots clicking softly on the pavement, strands of hair dancing in the light breeze. Daryl wonders why she feels safe, out here with him; ain't like this place is smart enough to have street patrols, although they do keep it fairly well lit; maybe she assumes she'd be able to scream if he tried anything. Or maybe she just doesn't care about whatever he might do to her, alone in the dark.

The thought that maybe she doesn't find him dangerous at all doesn't even cross his mind.

“They don't get it.”

She speaks so suddenly Daryl would have jumped if she'd been any louder; but she speaks in so close to a whisper for a moment he's worried she's losing her voice. And then he looks at her face and she looks so sad he worries about a whole lot of other things.

“Who?” he grunts out.

“Them. Everyone.” She still isn't looking at him; is looking at her feet, as they walk down the street, mottled grey in the dim.“ Most of them have been inside these walls since the beginning. They don't know...” She trails off, chewing her lip. Her gaze lands on Daryl and he feels like he should be the one looking away now.

“What it's like out there?”

She nods, looks at the night sky, the street lamps they pass. Her eyes flicker back and forth like she's following them, watching from a car window. They sparkle on her clean skin.

“They don't know,” she says.

“You feel safe here?” he asks.

She snorts softly. “Do you?”

His lip twitches at that, but he doesn't reply. He could, of course—he agrees with her; he’s stockpiling weapons under his floorboards, memorizing the streets like a battlezone, after all. It makes his cheeks flush, a little, that he's found out this similarity between them. A similarity that could be useful.

But he doesn't answer, because a simple 'yes' would not be the whole truth. Because even if this place were the armed camp it should be, he wouldn't feel safe. Daryl doesn't think he's felt safe a day in his life.

“Least it's a nice night, huh?”

“Yeah,” he grunts, because it is; clear and mild and shimmering with stars, making her hair glow. When she looks at him, he doesn't look away.

She slows to a stop then, directly below a street lamp, banishing the shadows from her face as if she were a source of light herself. She looks up at him. A slow grin crawls up her cheeks. He has to blink, a few times, the illumination it throws his way; the way his knees go weak.

“We ain't dead, either.”

He clears his throat. “No.”

She looks at him, large eyes trembling in the light. Slowly her smile fades. Her mouth turns serious. She steps forward and takes ahold of his sleeve and he does not move away.

When she speaks it is low; meant only for him, as if they were the last people in the world and had long ago lost the need for speech.

“I'm tired, Daryl,” she says. Her eyes search his face, sad, glittering. “I'm tired of just surviving.”

He feels something small hiccup in his chest, then. It could be the deer meat he ate at the party; or just her proximity, maybe, the wind blowing the smell of her shampoo in his face, the way she keeps drawing closer and closer and tipping her head and throwing sparks of light off her lipgloss. It could be the way her hand tightens on his sleeve. It could be the slow way she rises as if borne by the air, buoyed to her tiptoes and to the brush of his lips, thin and dry and trembling. It could be the way her eyelashes tremble, too, as she glances at his mouth.

“I'm ready to live,” she whispers.

* * *

Later, when he wakes in her bed, the sound of her singing echoing off the walls of the shower, he'll feel it again; that feeling in his chest, like a hiccup, like a whisper, quiet like the tread of her feet as she walks back to him, shimmering wet and covered in a towel that soon finds its way to the floor. He'll feel it shivering up his spine with the trail of her lips; following her hands as they drift across his arms. He'll feel it as he sinks inside her, lighting her up, lighting him up, setting them on fire like a beacon cast at sea.

And he'll know what it means. Because as he stands there in the glow of the lamplight, Beth Greene's soft fingers working through his dangling hair, her breath sweet and warm as it mingles with his—he figures it out. And it doesn't hit him like a freight train. It doesn't smack him on the back like Merle's long dead hand, it doesn't pet his cheek like his Ma's drunken paws. It slides through him with a gentleness like the weather, shining, new, a bit of bright in his rainy skies.

He knows what that hiccup was, now.

For a moment, just a few—he felt safe.

 


End file.
